Fool and Her Honey (9781622860791) Read online

  “Girl, he got a big ol’ dick,” she’d told me about so many of the boys we went to school with—just pick a name. “We stayed after yesterday and did it in the girls’ locker room in the ninth-grade gym.”

  “For real?” I’d asked the first time she said that to me. My eyes had to be stretched as big as the moon. “What does it feel like, though?”

  She’d jerked her head back like I was asking the most asinine question in the world. “It feels good!”

  I didn’t know how to interpret that, and I wasn’t ready to find out for myself, so I’d have to take her word for it. By the time we graduated, she’d had more sex partners than my momma had years of her life.

  Even with me knowing how loose she was, I thought our friendship was stronger than her promiscuity, so I had no problem with her meeting and knowing about Cameron. I’d met Cameron when I was eighteen, while walking home from Vanisha’s house after she had spent eight hours braiding my hair. He was hot and sweaty from chasing a basketball around on the court, but he seemed delighted to make my acquaintance in passing. We hit it off right away, and I found him adorably sweet, handsome, and respectful. After a couple months of dating, we were inseparable when he wasn’t in class. I gave that man my heart, my soul, the very essence of my womanhood. And he graciously and gently took it. It wasn’t long before I got pregnant, and although we were young, we decided marriage was the right thing to do.

  Vanisha was the maid of honor at my wedding, stood right there staring at my coochie when I gave birth to my baby girl, Tiara, and held my hand when I couldn’t stop crying after Tiara’s underdeveloped lungs wouldn’t allow her to live past two days. Vanisha was my homegirl, my sista friend, my ace boon coon.

  Before I turned twenty, Cameron and I had an apartment, struggled with consumer debt, and had scarred credit from trying to pay off the hospital bill from the baby we’d had and lost without having insurance. Cameron ended up dropping out of college to work full-time as an employee of Anheuser-Busch, while I tried to get my cosmetologist career off the ground. It wasn’t the best life, but I was happy being Mrs. Cameron Allen.

  Now here was where I started messing up. See, Cameron was my first. All I’d learned about sex, or what I thought sex should be, I learned from Vanisha’s explicit stories, erotica books, movie scenes, and misogynistic videos of girls shaking their booties on the BET channel. My mother was far too prudish to have any real sex conversations with me, other than giving me instructions to keep my panties up.

  Like every woman before me who’d opened her legs for the man she loved, I wanted to sex him out of his mind. From what I’d seen on videos and such, I was expecting a certain reaction out of Cameron. I wanted to hear some “Oohs” and “Aahs,” some “Oh, babies” and “Oh, my Gods!” I wanted to see his face contort uncontrollably and hear a series of cuss words leave his lips before he collapsed in a heap on top of me, panting, “Damn, Dina girl!” But most times when Cameron and I made love, he was silent and rhythmic—never calling my name, never losing himself in a series of gasps, never having to catch his breath. His expression always looked stoic and disengaged, nothing like I’d seen on TV.

  I tried to provoke a response from him by adding my own sound effects, moaning his name to stroke his ego, although honestly, I didn’t really feel anything to make me do that. Nonetheless, I thought if I made him believe he was puttin’ it down, it would make him more responsive. Well, it didn’t work, and when it didn’t, what did my stupid behind do? I asked Vanisha for some sex tips.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I complained one day, standing in the middle of her apartment, dancing to videos. “He just seems like he doesn’t enjoy it.”

  “Girl, you gotta know how to work that thang!” she said and laughed, twisting a single leg in a circular motion and rotating her hips in a way that could probably make her some money if she were in a strip joint. “I mean, what do you be doing?”

  I shrugged. “What you mean?”

  “You don’t just be lying there like a board, do you?”

  “No,” I answered, embarrassed. “I be into it, moving and stuff,” I said, trying to defend myself. “But it’s like . . .” I shrugged again. “I don’t know . . . like he’s bored or something.”

  “Humph! I don’t know what kinda sex y’all be having that he be acting bored,” she said. “Do you be going down on him?” she asked, just as easily as if she were asking for a stick of chewing gum.

  “I mean, I . . . we . . .” I didn’t know how to answer that question. I was ashamed to admit that I’d put my husband’s thing-a-ling in my mouth, but at the same time, I was ashamed to say that I hadn’t.

  “Maybe you need to do that,” she commented when I couldn’t get any words to come out of my mouth. “Girl, men love that.” She grinned and nodded. “If that don’t make him cuss, you’re definitely doing something wrong.”

  It wasn’t long after that conversation that all of a sudden Vanisha started coming over all the damn time. “Girl, I was just dropping by. I don’t want nothing,” she’d say. “You mind if I do a load of laundry over here at your house? My washer won’t spin. My air conditioner broke down again. I had to come over here just so I could cool off a little bit.”

  I, being the unsuspecting dummy that I was back then, let her conniving ass come right on in. And like a vulture waiting for a wild animal to die, she circled a few times, then came in for a landing—right in my and Cameron’s bed. I never actually caught them doing the do, and I guess that was why I ignored what was right in front of me—believing that Cameron could and would make love only to me. I trusted him; I trusted her. When I became suspicious for obvious reasons and questioned Cameron about it, he did what all men did, denied and lied.

  Cameron made up outrageous stories about how he was supposed to be at work but ended up at her house first because she’d called, asking for a jump. And how he was just sitting at home, minding his business, while I was out getting a pedicure, when she came over, asking if she could take a shower at our house, because her water got cut off. And how . . . Well, I don’t want to think about it anymore, but let’s just say my momma raised a damn fool. Except I didn’t realize it then like I did now.

  I’d never realized until today just how hurt I still was over the thought that Cameron had screwed another woman, my best friend at that. I also realized how much I hated her and Cameron for it. I thought I had let that mess go, especially after Cameron and I divorced. We parted ways for a number of reasons—she happened not to be one of them—because, like I said, I was too stupid to trust and act on what I innately knew. Now here I was, with a cup of yogurt and a bottle of orange juice in my hands, headed to the house of the Lord with a heart full of hate.

  “Work on me, Jesus,” I whispered as a prayer, “because I don’t want to hate anybody, but I don’t know how to get rid of that hurt from this betrayal.” “Help me Lord,” I added, because tears were now welling in my eyes. Not specifically because of my recollections of Vanisha and Cameron, but because of the panties that I’d found tucked in Bertrand’s drawer the other week, and because I was wondering whether I was being a fool all over again.

  The next day, I just couldn’t hold myself together. I tried to, but every little thing made me cry. Ms. Maybelle, a nasty old bat of a woman whose hair I’d been doing every Tuesday for the past six years, took notice of my less than pleasant demeanor and knew that this time she wasn’t the cause of it. She then did something she’d never done before: with a heart filled with compassion, she asked me what was wrong.

  “Looks like something bothering you, baby. What’s going on?” she asked while I pressed her hair.

  “I’m all right, Ms. Maybelle. Just got a lot on my mind.”

  “Naw, naw, naw. It’s something more than that,” she responded intuitively. “What is it? Go on and share your heart.”

  I was reluctant at first, but what did I have to lose by sharing with this woman, who had one foot in the grave an
d the other on a banana peel? Wasn’t like she could run out and tell it to anyone that would matter.

  “My fiancé and I are just going through a rough time,” I said, wringing my hands. Suddenly I felt like a schoolgirl, trying to explain some misbehavior to my teacher.

  “Every relationship have problems, baby. Every one of ’em. Ain’t a single one out there where somebody ain’t been taken to hell. I been married three times in my lifetime, and each time I just knew I was setting myself up for the best possible life. Let me tell you, honey, ain’t na’ one of my husbands ever done completely right by me.”

  That was disheartening to hear.

  “He ain’t beatin’ you, is he?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.” I instantly shook my head.

  “I ain’t think so. Ain’t never seen you come up in here with no bumps and bruises. So he must be tippin’ on the side. That’s the only other thing that will break a woman down like you is broke down right now.”

  My silence said what I couldn’t bring my mouth to say. The panties were bad enough, but after that, I found a few text messages that made me even more suspicious, although they weren’t exactly incriminating.

  “Let me tell you something. Everybody cheat, everybody,” she stated adamantly, looking me in the eye.

  I was no cheater, but I did have my moments of wondering what different men would be like in bed. That was as far as I ever took it, though.

  “You just have to find the one that takes care of home and respects you that you can tolerate. You ain’t gone escape that cheatin’ thang, no matter what you do. Now, if you can put up with your future husband, gone and put up with him. Otherwise, you gonna end up alone and lonely and bitter something terrible. Then you gone be forever searching for that one person who you thank gone do you right. Save yourself some time, sugar. He ain’t out there. He just ain’t.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, but not because I fully agreed with her. But it seemed appropriate to say that.

  “You gone have to learn how to get over it and stop crying over spilled milk. I know it hurt, ’cause I been there. Now, if you just cain’t put it past you and get over it, then you gotsta make a decision. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered again.

  “If you cain’t live with him in peace, then you get up and leave his sorry ass. Ain’t no sense in living miserable for the rest of your life. Then, when you dead and gone, that same man gone be sitting there at your funeral, telling everybody how he would do anything to get you back, when truth be told, he the one that ran you to your grave in the first place. And guess where all them no-good skanks he done slept with gone be? They gone be somewhere nearby, just waiting for them to drop you in the ground so they can drop their drawers for him again. I’m telling you what I know. I done seen it happen time and time again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, I been watching you come up in here for the past month with your face all long and drawn out, looking right pitiful, and I know what that look mean.” She paused and studied my face for a few seconds. “I know what it mean. Done seen it too many times before. Now what you gotta do is ask yourself if you got any strength left.”

  She stared directly into my eyes, demanding an answer, but I kept quiet, because honestly, I didn’t know.

  “Well, do you?”

  “I . . . I think so.”

  “Chile, you don’t know your own strength. You know you ain’t got to put up with no man and his bullshit.” Hearing her cuss made me giggle. “You gone and get yourself together and move on and have yourself a happy life. Don’t you think you deserve to be happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what you sittin’ round for? Gone and be happy. Be happy with him, or be happy without him. If he taking good care of you and paying the bills like he supposed to be doing, let him go on, and you find you a little something on the side.”

  All right, she was going a bit too far by suggesting that I start cheating on my man just to balance things out. I just didn’t have it in me to do that. I’d leave him before I’d cheat.

  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You make sure you remember that, hear?”

  “But what about love, Ms. Maybelle?”

  “Chile, love is overrated. It don’t put money in the bank or pay no damn bills.” She went on for a few more minutes, then ended her speech with, “Now, fix your face and gone and curl my hair. I got somewhere to be after a while.”

  While I flipped and rolled my Marcel irons through her hair, I mulled over everything she’d said. How sad it was to think that there was no such thing as a faithful mate. You mean to tell me, Eddie Murphy had told us right in his standup comedy film Eddie Murphy Raw way back when? Ms. Maybelle did have a point, though. I was quite miserable every time I thought about Bertrand’s possible indiscretions and how much they just tore into my heart. I wanted to love him and work things out, but I just couldn’t. It hurt too bad. It was too close to my past.

  By the time I left Ms. Maybelle’s house that evening, my mind was made up. I was going to leave Bertrand. And not because I hated him so much, but because I knew that I would never really trust him. I would never look at him the same; making love would never feel pure and honest. I’d never again feel like he really did love me. Eventually, we’d both be terribly miserable, and that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. Especially to me, who had been faithful, even overlooking my own moral convictions.

  Chapter 16

  Dina

  Everything Bertrand did was suspicious to me. Everything. If he showered for an extra five minutes, I’d peek in the tub to see if he was masturbating, with thoughts of Miranda on his mind for sure. If he was late coming in from work, I was unsettled with his explanation of trying to finish up a project or a meeting that ran over. If he dressed a particular kind of way, I wondered who he was on his way to meet. I shared my thoughts with Candis and Celeste when we met at Pizzeria Bianco that weekend, spliting one of the shop’s specialties, the Wiseguy, a pizza made with roasted onion, smoked mozzarella and fennel Sausage.

  “You messed up when you told him about those panties,” Candis said. “Now you will never find out if he’s cheating, because all he is going to do is hide it better.”

  She had a point. I’d alerted Bertrand that my antennae were up, so now he’d be super careful, whereas he might have gotten increasingly sloppy if I’d said nothing.

  “You should have just kept it to yourself until you had more information,” Candis added.

  “That’s easy to say when you don’t have to sleep in the bed beside him,” I argued. “After a while, saying that I have a headache while I try to figure things out doesn’t really work.”

  “So don’t say that. Just say no,” Candis suggested.

  “That sounds silly,” Celeste commented. “How are you going to refuse to have sex with your man? She already thinks he’s cheating. All that’s going to do is push him further out there . . . if that’s what he’s doing.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t keep sleeping with him if I thought he was slippin’, tippin’, and dippin’. That’s how people mess around and catch stuff they can’t get rid of,” Candis argued.

  Hearing her words made a knot form in my stomach, not that I hadn’t thought about that before. It just seemed better to ignore the thought than embrace it.

  “Seriously Dina, do you think he’s cheating on you?” Celeste asked.

  Before I could answer, Candis interjected, “You know what they say. If you think he’s cheating, he’s cheating. Don’t you be no fool, Dina. You ain’t crazy.”

  “She can’t go around just being suspicious without cause, either.”

  “She’s not being suspicious without cause. She’s got a reason to be,” Candis countered.

  “Dina, have you talked to Bertrand about your insecurities?”

  “We’ve had a couple of conversations, but they’ve not been pleasant,” I mumbled.

  “What is h
e saying?” Celeste asked.

  “I bet he’s saying what every man says when his woman asks him if he’s cheating. ‘No, baby! I love you, and I only want to make love to you! I’d be a fool to cheat on you.’ Whatever. Call me Sunshine Anderson, because I’ve heard it all before,” Candis said, ending in song.

  “All right, Candis. Stop it. You’re going to make me cry,” I said, shoving her arm and almost knocking the slice of pizza she held out of her hand. “I just don’t know what to believe. Which is the exact same place I was in years ago, when I was married to Cameron, and he was playing me like a damn video game.”

  “You’re in a tough spot, Dina, but the only way to get past it is to talk with Bertrand,” Celeste suggested. “You might have to get some counseling to deal with your unresolved issues with Cameron.”

  “Unresolved? Girl, please. I resolved those issues when I divorced him,” I said in my defense.

  “I don’t think so. Sounds to me like you’ve carried the mistrust from your first marriage into your current relationship,” Celeste almost whispered.

  “No, I haven’t! I’ve always trusted Bertrand up until now. I wasn’t like this before, peeping and looking in every nook and corner for clues of something going on.”

  “I think you have and just don’t realize it,” Candis threw in. “Because why else would you be just randomly going through his drawers?”

  “What’s wrong with me doing that? We’re an engaged couple. I could see if we were just dating and I was spending the night at his place, but I’m supposed to be his wife, and I have a right to look at everything in that house.”

  “You might have a right, but did you have a reason?” Celeste asked.

  Which got me thinking. What had been my reason for digging through his things? “I don’t believe in living life blind. I think everybody ought to keep their eyes open, and there’s nothing wrong with being aware of your surroundings.”